4 Data Collection

4.1 Transactions and assets of relevance to innovation

Innovation activities can produce knowledge-based assets. The SNA defines an asset as a store of value that represents a benefit or series of benefits accruing to the economic owner by holding or using the asset over a period of time. Both financial and non-financial assets are relevant to innovation. Fixed assets are the result of production activities and are used repeatedly or continuously in production processes for more than one year. The SNA treatment of knowledge assets (formally defined as intellectual property products) has evolved over time, with the addition of R&D in 2008.

For our purposes, particularly because of the research interests of the Consortium, copyright-based industries, and copyright protected intellectual property assets, and their creators are the most important. We believe that in CCIs the role of patents is much smaller than in manufacturing, agricululture or even traditional services.

Our strategy should be to try to find Data Linkage that complies with data protection rules between information on copyright protected works (including neighboring rights and other copyright-like concepts) and patent information, because the traditional route of tracintg innovation activities directly is less feasible in CCIs.

An example of the Data Linkage could be connecting data from public databases about artists (such as MusicBrainz), public or semi-public databases for copyright management, and sending pre-filled questionnaires to the artists about their innovative activities or spending.

4.2 Activities leading to and following from innovations

Institutional units can undertake a series of actions with the intention to develop or adopt innovations. This can require dedicated resources and engagement in specific activities, including policies, processes and procedures.

We should concentrate on innovation activities that leave a trace in some more-or-less comprehensive database, such as the CISAC database of copyright-protected music works, the Lumiere Database of European films, patents.

Activities are often leaving trace in the use of resources (as reflected in R&D spending and financial statements) but full IFRS disclosures are only required by large corporations, and particularly public corporations. There are only a handful of such corporations present in the EU CCIs. The Community Innovation Survey explictly asks about innovative activities, but it excludes almost all CCIs, because it is sent only to organizations with at least 10 employees.

We should create ex ante harmonized innovation surveys aimed at CCIs and creative freelancers. An important contribution would be to the understanding of innovation is to know how creative microenterprises are pooling certain activities (such as strategic HR, market and process research, etc. into umbrella organizations.)